From November 1918, when Poland regained independence, until 1922, Piłsudski was Poland's Chief of State. In 1919–21 he commanded Polish forces in six border wars that defined the country's borders. His forces seemed on the verge of defeat in the Polish–Soviet War when, in the August 1920 Battle of Warsaw, they threw back the invading Soviet Russian forces. In 1923, with the government dominated by his opponents, in particular the National Democrats, Piłsudski retired from active politics. Three years later he returned to power in the May 1926 coup d'état and became Poland's strongman. From then until his death in 1935, he concerned himself primarily with military and foreign affairs.

In international affairs, Piłsudski pursued two complementary strategies meant to secure Poland's independence and to enhance her national security: "Prometheism", aimed at achieving the disintegration of Imperial Russia and later the Soviet Union into their constituent nations; and the creation of an Intermarium federation of states lying between the Baltic and Black Seas and between Germany and Russia. The proposed Intermarium's central purpose was to secure its peoples against western and eastern European imperialisms.[8]

Historian Piotr Wandycz characterizes Piłsudski as "an ardent Polish patriot who on occasion would castigate the Poles for their stupidity, cowardice, or servility. He described himself as a Polish-Lithuanian, and was stubborn and reserved, loath to show his emotions."[9] Though some aspects of Piłsudski's administration remain controversial, he is highly esteemed in Polish memory and is regarded, together with his antagonist Roman Dmowski, as a founder of modern independent Poland.

Józef, when he attended the Russian gymnasium in Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), was not an especially diligent student.[19] One of the younger Polish students at this gymnasium was the future Russian communist leader Feliks Dzierżyński, who later would become Piłsudski's arch-enemy.[20] Along with his brothers Bronisław, Adam and Jan, Józef was introduced by his mother Maria, née Billewicz, to Polish history and literature, which were suppressed by the Russian authorities.[21] His father, likewise named Józef, had fought in the January 1863 Uprising against Russian rule of Poland.[14]

The family resented the Russian government's Russification policies. Young Józef profoundly disliked having to attend Russian Orthodox Church service[21] and left school with an aversion not only for the Russian Tsar and the Russian Empire, but for the culture, which he knew well.[13]

Józef received a milder sentence: five years' exile in Siberia, first at Kirensk on the Lena River, then at Tunka.[14][24] While being transported in a prisoners' convoy to Siberia, Piłsudski was held for several weeks at a prison in Irkutsk.[25] There, he took part in what the authorities viewed as a revolt. After one of the inmates had insulted a guard and refused to apologize, he and other political prisoners were beaten by the guards for their defiance;[26] Piłsudski lost two teeth and took part in a subsequent hunger strike until the authorities reinstated political prisoners' privileges that had been suspended after the incident.[26] For his involvement, he was sentenced in 1888 to six months' imprisonment.[27] He had to spend the first night of his incarceration in 40-degree-below-zero Siberian cold; this led to an illness that nearly killed him and to health problems that would plague him throughout life.[27]

During his years of exile in Siberia, Piłsudski met many Sybiraks, including Bronisław Szwarce, who had almost become a leader of the January 1863 Uprising.[28] He was allowed to work in an occupation of his own choosing, and earned his living tutoring local children in mathematics and foreign languages[13] (he knew French, German and Lithuanian in addition to Russian and his native Polish; he would later learn English).[29] Local officials decided that as a Polish noble he was not entitled to the 10-ruble pension received by most other exiles.[30]

In 1892 Piłsudski returned from exile and settled in Adomavas Manor near Teneniai (now in Šilalė district). In 1893 he joined the Polish Socialist Party (PPS)[14] and helped organize its Lithuanian branch.[31] Initially he sided with the Socialists' more radical wing, but despite the socialist movement's ostensible internationalism he remained a Polish nationalist.[32] In 1894, as its chief editor, he began publishing an underground socialist newspaper, Robotnik (The Worker); he would also be one of its chief writers, and, initially, a typesetter.[14][22][33][34] In 1895, he became a PPS leader and took the position that doctrinal issues were of minor importance and that socialist ideology should be merged with nationalist ideology, since that combination offered the greatest chance of restoring Polish independence.[22]

Piłsudski in 1899

On 15 July 1899, while an underground organizer, Piłsudski married a fellow socialist organizer, Maria Juszkiewiczowa, née Koplewska.[35][36][37] According to his chief biographer, Wacław Jędrzejewicz, the marriage was less romantic than pragmatic in nature. Both were very involved in the socialist and independence movements. The printing press of "Robotnik" was in their apartment first in Wilno, then in Łódź. Having a pretext of regular family life made them less subject to suspicion. Russian law also protected a wife from prosecution for the illegal activities of her husband.[38] The marriage deteriorated when, several years later, Piłsudski began an affair with a younger socialist,[32]Aleksandra Szczerbińska. Maria died in 1921, and in October that year Piłsudski married Aleksandra. By then the couple had two daughters, Wanda and Jadwiga.

At the time, when almost all parties in Russian Poland and Lithuania took a conciliatory position toward the Russian Empire and aimed at negotiating within it a limited autonomy for Poland, Piłsudski's PPS was the only political force that was prepared to fight the Empire for Polish independence and to resort to violence in order to achieve that goal.[13]

On the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), in the summer of 1904, Piłsudski traveled to Tokyo, Japan, where he tried unsuccessfully to obtain that country's assistance for an uprising in Poland. He offered to supply Japan with intelligence in support of its war with Russia, and proposed the creation of a Polish Legion from Poles,[39] conscripted into the Russian Army, who had been captured by Japan. He also suggested a "Promethean" project directed at breaking up the Russian Empire, a goal that he later continued to pursue.[40] Meeting with Yamagata Aritomo, he suggested that starting a guerrilla war in Poland would distract Russia and asked for Japan to supply him with weapons. Although the Japanese diplomat Hayashi Tadasu supported the plan, the Japanese government, including Yamagata, was more skeptical.[41]

Piłsudski's arch-rival Roman Dmowski travelled to Japan, where he argued against Piłsudski's plan, endeavoring to discourage the Japanese government from supporting a Polish revolution, which Dmowski felt would then be doomed to failure.[39][42] Dmowski, himself a Polish patriot, would remain Piłsudski's political archenemy to the end of Piłsudski's life.[43] In the end, the Japanese offered Piłsudski much less than he had hoped for; he received Japan's help in purchasing weapons and ammunition for the PPS and its combat organisation, and the Japanese declined the Legion proposal.[14][39]

In the fall of 1904, Piłsudski formed a paramilitary unit (the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party, or bojówki) aiming to create an armed resistance movement against the Russian authorities.[42] The PPS organized an increasing numbers of demonstrations, mainly in Warsaw; on 28 October 1904, Russian Cossackcavalry attacked a demonstration, and in reprisal, during a demonstration on 13 November Piłsudski's paramilitary opened fire on Russian police and military.[42][44] Initially concentrating their attention on spies and informers, in March 1905 the paramilitary began using bombs to assassinate selected Russian police officers.[45]

During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Piłsudski played a leading role in events in Congress Poland. In early 1905 he ordered the PPS to launch a general strike there; it involved some 400,000 workers and lasted two months until it was broken by the Russian authorities.[42] In June 1905, Piłsudski sent paramilitary aid to an uprising in Łódź. During the "June Days", as the Łódź uprising came to be known, armed clashes broke out between Piłsudski's paramilitaries and gunmen loyal to Dmowski and his National Democrats.[42] On 22 December 1905, Piłsudski called for all Polish workers to rise up; the call went largely unheeded.[42]

Unlike the National Democrats, Piłsudski instructed the PPS to boycott the elections to the First Duma.[42] The decision and his resolve to try to win Polish independence through uprisings caused tensions within the PPS, and in November 1906, the party fractured over Piłsudski's leadership.[43] His faction came to be called the "Old Faction" or "Revolutionary Faction" ("Starzy" or "Frakcja Rewolucyjna"), while their opponents were known as the "Young Faction", "Moderate Faction" or "Left Wing" ("Młodzi", "Frakcja Umiarkowana", "Lewica"). The "Young" sympathized with the Social Democrats of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and believed that priority should be given to co-operation with Russian revolutionaries in toppling the tsarist regime and creating a socialist utopia that would facilitate negotiations for independence.[22]

Piłsudski and his supporters in the Revolutionary Faction continued to plot a revolution against Tsarist Russia that would secure Polish independence.[14] By 1909, his faction would again be the majority in the PPS, and Piłsudski would remain one of the most important PPS leaders until the outbreak of the First World War.[46]

Piłsudski anticipated a coming European war[7] and the need to organize the nucleus of a future Polish Army, which could help win Poland's independence from the three empires that had partitioned it out of political existence in the late 18th century. In 1906 Piłsudski, with the connivance of the Austrian authorities, founded a military school in Kraków for the training of paramilitary units.[43] In 1906 alone, the 800-strong paramilitaries, operating in five-man teams in Congress Poland, killed 336 Russian officials; in subsequent years, the number of their casualties declined, and the paramilitaries' numbers increased to some 2,000 in 1908.[43][47]

The paramilitaries also held up Russian currency transports that were leaving Polish territories. On the night of 26/27 September 1908, they robbed a Russian mail train that was carrying tax revenues from Warsaw to Saint Petersburg.[43] Piłsudski, who took part in this Bezdany raid near Vilnius, used the funds thus "expropriated" to finance his secret military organization.[48] The take from that single raid (200,812 rubles) was a fortune for the time and equaled the paramilitaries' entire takes of the two preceding years.[47]

In 1910, two legal paramilitary organizations were created in the Austrian zone of Poland, one in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) and one in Kraków, to conduct training in military science. With the permission of the Austrian authorities, Piłsudski founded a series of "sporting clubs", then the Riflemen's Association, which served as cover to train a Polish military force. In 1912 Piłsudski (using the nom de guerre, "Mieczysław") became commander-in-chief of a Riflemen's Association (Związek Strzelecki) that grew by 1914 to 12,000 men.[14][43] In 1914, Piłsudski declared, "Only the sword now carries any weight in the balance for the destiny of a nation."[43]

World War I

At a meeting in Paris in 1914, Piłsudski presciently declared that in the impending war, for Poland to regain independence, Russia must be beaten by the Central Powers (the Austro-Hungarian and German Empires), and the latter powers must in their turn be beaten by France, Britain and the United States.[7] By contrast, Roman Dmowski, Piłsudski's rival, believed that the best way to achieve a unified and independent Poland was to support the Triple Entente against the Central Powers.[49]

Piłsudski's strategy was to send his forces north across the border into Russian Poland into an area that the Russian Army had evacuated in the hope of breaking through to Warsaw and sparking a national uprising.[22][52] Using his limited forces in those early days, he backed his orders with the sanction of a fictitious "National Government in Warsaw",[53] and he bent and stretched Austrian orders to the utmost, taking initiatives, moving forward and establishing Polish institutions in liberated towns while the Austrians saw his forces as good only for scouting or for supporting main Austrian formations.[54] On 12 August 1914, Piłsudski's forces took the town of Kielce, of Kielce Governorate, but Piłsudski found the populace less supportive than he had expected.[55]

Soon afterward he officially established the Polish Legions, taking personal command of their First Brigade,[14] which he would lead successfully into several victorious battles.[22] He also secretly informed the British government in the fall of 1914 that his Legions would never fight France or Britain, only Russia.[52]

Piłsudski and his officers, 1915

Piłsudski decreed that Legions' personnel were to be addressed by the French Revolution-inspired "Citizen" (Obywatel), and he was referred to as "the Commandant" ("Komendant").[49] Piłsudski enjoyed extreme respect and loyalty from his men,[49] which would remain for years to come. The Polish Legions fought against Russia, at the side of the Central Powers, until 1917.

In mid-1916, after the Battle of Kostiuchnówka (4–6 July 1916), in which the Polish Legions delayed a Russian offensive at a cost of over 2,000 casualties,[56] Piłsudski demanded for the Central Powers to issue a guarantee of independence for Poland. He backed that demand with his own proffered resignation and that of many of the Legions' officers.[57] On 5 November 1916 the Central Powers proclaimed the "independence" of Poland, hoping to increase the number of Polish troops that could be sent to the Eastern Front against Russia, thereby relieving German forces to bolster the Western Front.[48][58]

On 8 November 1918, three days before the Armistice, Piłsudski and his colleague, Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, were released by the Germans from Magdeburg and soon, like Vladimir Lenin before them, placed on a private train, bound for their national capital, as the collapsing Germans hoped that Piłsudski would create a force that was friendly to them.[52]

Rebuilding Poland

Ulica Mokotowska 50, Warsaw, where Piłsudski stayed 13–29 November 1918, after his release from Magdeburg

Piłsudski improvised armored car, 1919, named after Piłsudski

On 11 November 1918 in Warsaw, Piłsudski was appointed Commander in Chief of Polish forces by the Regency Council and was entrusted with creating a national government for the newly independent country. On that very day, which would become Poland's Independence Day, he proclaimed an independent Polish state.[52]

That week too, Piłsudski also negotiated the evacuation of the German garrison from Warsaw and of other German troops from the "Ober Ost" authority. Over 55,000 Germans would peacefully depart Poland, leaving their weapons to the Poles. In coming months, over 400,000 total would depart Polish territories.[52][61]

On 14 November 1918, Piłsudski was asked to supervise provisionally the running of the country. On 22 November he officially received, from the new government of Jędrzej Moraczewski, the title of Provisional Chief of State (Naczelnik Państwa) of renascent Poland.[14]

However, Piłsudski believed that as head of state, he must be above partisan politics.[22][52] The day after his arrival in Warsaw, he met with old colleagues from underground days, who addressed him socialist-style as "Comrade" ("Towarzysz") and asked for his support for their revolutionary policies; he refused it and answered: "Comrades, I took the red tram of socialism to the stop called Independence, and that's where I got off. You may keep on to the final stop if you wish, but from now on let's address each other as 'Mister' [rather than continue using the socialist term of address, 'Comrade']!"[14] He declined to support any party and did not form any political organization of his own; instead, he advocated creating a coalition government.[22][62] He also set about organizing a Polish army out of Polish veterans of the German, Russian and Austrian armies.

In the days immediately after the war, Piłsudski attempted to build a government in a shattered country. Much of former Russian Poland had been destroyed in the war, and systematic looting by the Germans had reduced the region's wealth by at least 10%.[63] A British diplomat who visited Warsaw in January 1919 reported: "I have nowhere seen anything like the evidences of extreme poverty and wretchedness that meet one's eye at almost every turn".[63]

In addition, the country had to unify the disparate systems of law, economics, and administration in the former German, Austrian and Russian sectors of Poland. There were nine legal systems, five currencies, 66 types of rail systems (with 165 models of locomotives), which all had to be consolidated on an expedited basis.[63]

Statue of Piłsudski before Warsaw's Belweder Palace, Piłsudski's official residence during his years in power

Wacław Jędrzejewicz, in Piłsudski: A Life for Poland, described Piłsudski as very deliberate in his decision-making and collected all available pertinent information and then took his time weighing it before arriving at a final decision. Piłsudski drove himself hard, working all day and all night.[63] He maintained a simple lifestyle, eating plain meals alone at an inexpensive restaurant.[63] Though he was popular with much of the Polish public, his reputation as a loner (the result of many years' underground work) and as a man who distrusted almost everyone else, which led to strained relations with other Polish politicians.[32]

Piłsudski and the first Polish government were distrusted in the West because he had co-operated with the Central Powers in 1914 to 1917 and because the governments of Daszyński and Jędrzej Moraczewski were primarily socialist.[52] It was not until January 1919, when the world-famous pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski became prime minister and foreign minister of a new government that it was recognized in the West.[52]

That still left two separate governments claiming to be Poland's legitimate government: Piłsudski's in Warsaw and Dmowski's in Paris.[63] To ensure that Poland had a single government and to avert civil war, Paderewski met with Dmowski and Piłsudski and persuaded them to join forces, with Piłsudski acting as Provisional Chief of State and Commander-in-Chief while Dmowski and Paderewski represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference.[64] Articles 87–93 of the Treaty of Versailles[65] and the Little Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, formally established Poland as an independent and sovereign state in the international arena.[66]

Piłsudski often clashed with Dmowski for viewing the Poles as the dominant nationality in renascent Poland, attempting to send the Blue Army to Poland through Danzig, Germany (now Gdańsk, Poland).[67][68] On 5 January 1919, some of Dmowski's supporters (Marian Januszajtis-Żegota and Eustachy Sapieha) attempted a coup against Piłsudski and Prime Minister Moraczewski, but they failed.[69]

On 20 February 1919, Piłsudski declared that he would return his powers to the newly elected Polish parliament (Sejm). However, the Sejm reinstated his office in the Little Constitution of 1919. The word "Provisional" was struck from his title, and Piłsudski would hold the office until 9 December 1922, when Gabriel Narutowicz was elected as the first president.[14]

Piłsudski's plan met with opposition from most of the prospective member states, which refused to relinquish any of their hard-won independence, as well as from the Allied powers, who thought it to be too bold a change to the existing balance-of-power structure.[71] According to historian George Sanford, it was around 1920 that Piłsudski came to realize the infeasibility of that version of his Intermarium project.[72]

Polish–Soviet War

In the aftermath of World War I, there was unrest on all Polish borders. Regarding Poland's future frontiers, Piłsudski said, "All that we can gain in the west depends on the Entente—on the extent to which it may wish to squeeze Germany". In the east, "there are doors that open and close, and it depends on who forces them open and how far".[74] In 1918 in the east, Polish forces clashed with Ukrainian forces in the Polish–Ukrainian War, and Piłsudski's first orders as Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army, on 12 November 1918, were to provide support for the Polish struggle in Lviv.[75]

Piłsudski was aware that the Bolsheviks were no friends of independent Poland and that war with them was inevitable.[76] He viewed their advance west as a major problem, but he also considered the Bolsheviks less dangerous for Poland than their White opponents.[77] The "White Russians", representatives of the old Russian Empire, were willing to accept only limited independence for Poland, probably within borders similar to those of the former Congress Poland, and they clearly objected to Polish control of Ukraine, which was crucial for Piłsudski's Intermarium project.[78]

That was in contrast to the Bolsheviks, who proclaimed the partitions of Poland null and void.[79] Piłsudski thus speculated that Poland would be better off with the Bolsheviks, alienated from the Western powers, than with a restored Russian Empire.[77][80] By ignoring the strong pressures from the Entente Cordiale to join the attack on Lenin's struggling Bolshevik government, Piłsudski probably saved it in the summer and the fall of 1919.[81]

The Polish and the Ukrainian Armies, under Piłsudski's command, launched a successful offensive against the Russian forces in Ukraine. On 7 May 1920, with remarkably little fighting, they captured Kiev.[83]

The Bolshevik leadership framed the Polish actions as an invasion; in response, thousands of officers and deserters joined the Red Army, and thousands of civilians volunteered for war work.[84] The Soviets launched a counter-offensive from Belarus and counterattacked in Ukraine, advancing into Poland[83] in a drive toward Germany to encourage the Communist Party of Germany in its struggle to take power. Soviet confidence soared.[85] The Soviets announced their plans to invade Western Europe; Soviet communist theoretician Nikolai Bukharin, writing in Pravda, hoped for the resources to carry the campaign beyond Warsaw "straight to London and Paris".[86] Soviet commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky's order of the day for 2 July 1920 read: "To the West! Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to worldwide conflagration. March upon Vilnius, Minsk, Warsaw!"[87] and "onward to Berlin over the corpse of Poland!"[52]

On 1 July 1920, in view of the rapidly advancing Soviet offensive, Poland's parliament, the Sejm, formed a Council for Defense of the Nation, chaired by Piłsudski, to provide expeditious decision-making as a temporary supplanting of the fractious Sejm.[88] The National Democrats, however, contended that the string of Bolshevik victories had been Piłsudski's fault[89] and demanded that for him to resign; some even accused him of treason.[90] Their 19 July failure to carry a vote of no-confidence in the council led to Dmowski's withdrawal from it.[90] On 12 August, Piłsudski tendered his resignation to Prime Minister Wincenty Witos, offering to be the scapegoat if the military solution failed, but Witos refused to accept his resignation.[90] The Entente pressured Poland to surrender and enter into negotiations with the Bolsheviks. Piłsudski, however, was a staunch advocate of continuing the fight.[90] As Norman Davies noted, at that time, especially abroad, "Piłsudski had nothing of his later prestige. As a pre-war revolutionary he led his party to splits and quarrels; as a general in World War I he led his legions to internment and disbanding; as a marshal of the Polish Army he led it to Kiev and Vilnius, both now lost to Poles. He left the Polish Socialist Party and his Austro-German allies; refused to ally himself with Entente. In France and England he was considered a treasonous ally who leads Poland into destruction; in Russia he was seen as a false servant of the allies, who will lead imperialism to ruin. All – from Lenin to Lloyd George, from Pravda to Morning Star – considered him a military and political failure. In August 1920 all were in agreement that his catastrophic career will be crowned with the fall of Warsaw".[91]

However, over the next few weeks, Poland's risky, unconventional strategy at the August 1920 Battle of Warsaw halted the Soviet advance.[83] The Polish plan was developed by Piłsudski and others, including Tadeusz Rozwadowski.[92] Later, some supporters of Piłsudski would seek to portray him as the sole author of the Polish strategy, but opponents would seek to minimize his role.[93] In the West for a long time a myth persisted that it was General Maxime Weygand of the French Military Mission to Poland who had saved Poland; modern scholars, however, are in agreement that Weygand's role was minimal, at best.[52][93][94]

Piłsudski's plan called for Polish forces to withdraw across the Vistula River and to defend the bridgeheads at Warsaw and on the Wieprz River while some 25% of the available divisions concentrated to the south for a strategic counteroffensive. The plan next required two armies under General Józef Haller, facing Soviet frontal attack on Warsaw from the east, to hold their entrenched positions at all costs. At the same time, an army under General Władysław Sikorski was to strike north from outside Warsaw, cutting off Soviet forces that sought to envelope the Polish capital from that direction. The most important role, however, was assigned to a relatively small, approximately 20,000-man, newly assembled "Reserve Army" (also known as the "Strike Group", "Grupa Uderzeniowa"), comprising the most determined, battle-hardened Polish units that were commanded personally by Piłsudski. Their task was to spearhead a lightning northward offensive, from the Vistula-Wieprz triangle south of Warsaw, through a weak spot that had been identified by Polish intelligence between the Soviet Western and Southwestern Fronts. That offensive would separate the Soviet Western Front from its reserves and disorganize its movements. Eventually, the gap between Sikorski's army and the "Strike Group" would close near the East Prussian border, bringing about the destruction of the encircled Soviet forces.[95][96]

At the time, Piłsudski's plan was strongly criticized, and only the desperate situation of the Polish forces persuaded other commanders to go along with it. Though based on reliable intelligence, including decrypted Soviet radio communications, the plan was termed "amateurish" by high-ranking army officers and military experts, who were quick to point out Piłsudski's lack of formal military education. When a copy of the plan fell into Soviet hands, Western Front commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky thought it to be a ruse and disregarded it.[97] Days later, the Soviets paid dearly for that when, during the Battle of Warsaw, the overconfident Red Army suffered one of its greatest defeats ever.[83][96]

A National Democrat Sejm deputy, Stanisław Stroński, coined the phrase, "Miracle at the Vistula" ("Cud nad Wisłą"),[98] to express his disapproval of Piłsudski's "Ukrainian adventure". Stroński's phrase was adopted as praise for Piłsudski by some patriotically- or piously-minded Poles, who were unaware of Stroński's ironic intent. A junior member of the French military mission, Charles de Gaulle, would later adopt some lessons from the Polish-Soviet War as well as from Piłsudski's career.[96][99]

At Warsaw's Hotel Bristol, 3 July 1923, Piłsudski announced his retirement from active politics.

Two days later, on 16 December 1922, Narutowicz was shot dead by a right-wing painter and art critic, Eligiusz Niewiadomski, who had originally wanted to kill Piłsudski but had changed his target, influenced by National Democrat anti-Narutowicz propaganda.[105]

Piłsudski in front of his Sulejówek house, with his former soldiers, before the 1926 coup

After General Stanisław Szeptycki proposed that the military should be more closely supervised by civilian authorities, Piłsudski criticized that as an attempt to politicize the army, and on 28 June, he resigned his last political appointment. The same day, the Sejm's left-wing deputies voted a resolution, thanking him for his past work.[110] Piłsudski went into retirement in Sulejówek, outside Warsaw, at his country manor, "Milusin", which had been presented to him by his former soldiers.[111] There, he settled down to supporting his family by writing a series of political and military memoirs, including Rok 1920 (The Year 1920).[14]

Meanwhile, Poland's economy was in shambles. Hyperinflation fueled public unrest, and the government was unable to find a quick solution to the mounting unemployment and economic crisis.[112] Piłsudski's allies and supporters repeatedly asked him to return to politics, and he began to create a new power base, centred on former members of the Polish Legions and the Polish Military Organization as well as some left-wing and intelligentsia parties. In 1925, after several governments had resigned in short order and the political scene was becoming increasingly chaotic, Piłsudski became more and more critical of the government and eventually issued statements demanding the resignation of the Witos cabinet.[14][22]

When the Chjeno-Piast coalition, which Piłsudski had strongly criticized, formed a new government,[22] on 12–14 May 1926, Piłsudski returned to power in a coup d'état (the May Coup), supported by the Polish Socialist Party, Liberation, the Peasant Party and even the Polish Communist Party.[113] Piłsudski had hoped for a bloodless coup, but the government had refused to back down;[114] 215 soldiers and 164 civilians had been killed, and over 900 persons had been wounded.[115]

In government

On 31 May, the Sejm elected Piłsudski president of the Republic. Piłsudski, however, aware of the presidency's limited powers, refused the office. Another of his old friends, Ignacy Mościcki, was elected in his stead. Mościcki then appointed Piłsudski as Minister of Military Affairs (defence minister), a post that he would hold for the rest of his life in 11 successive governments, two of which he headed himself from 1926 to 1928 and for a brief period in 1930. He also served as General Inspector of the Armed Forces, and Chairman of The War Council.[14]

Piłsudski had no plans for major reforms; he quickly distanced himself from the most radical of his left-wing supporters and declared that his coup was to be a "revolution without revolutionary consequences".[22] His goals were to stabilize the country; reduce the influence of political parties, which he blamed for corruption and inefficiency; and strengthen the army.[22][116] His role in the Polish government over the subsequent years has been called a dictatorship or a "quasi-dictatorship".<[117]

Internal politics

Belweder Palace, Warsaw, Piłsudski's official residence during his years in power

In internal politics, Piłsudski's coup entailed sweeping limitations on parliamentary government, as his Sanation regime (1926–1939), at times employing authoritarian methods, sought to "restore public life to moral health". From 1928, the Sanation authorities were represented in the sphere of practical politics by the Non-partisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (BBWR). Popular support and an effective propaganda apparatus allowed Piłsudski to maintain his authoritarian powers, which could not be overruled either by the president, who was appointed by Piłsudski, or by the Sejm.[14] The powers of the Sejm were curtailed by constitutional amendments that were introduced soon after the coup, on 2 August 1926.[14] From 1926 to 1930, Piłsudski relied chiefly on propaganda to weaken the influence of opposition leaders.[22]

The culmination of his dictatorial and supralegal policies came in the 1930s, with the imprisonment and trial of certain political opponents (the Brest trials) on the eve of the 1930 legislative elections and with the 1934 establishment of a prison for political prisoners at Bereza Kartuska (today Biaroza),[22] where some prisoners were brutally mistreated.[118] After the BBWR's 1930 victory, Piłsudski left most internal matters in the hands of his "colonels" while he concentrated on military and foreign affairs.[22] He came under considerable criticism for his treatment of political opponents and their 1930 arrest and imprisonment was internationally condemned and damaged Poland's reputation.[58]

Piłsudski became increasingly disillusioned with democracy in Poland.[119] His intemperate public utterances (he called the Sejm a "prostitute") and his sending of 90 armed officers into the Sejm building in response to an impending vote of no-confidence caused concern in contemporary and modern observers who have seen his actions as setting precedents for authoritarian responses to political challenges.[120][121][122]

One of his main goals was to transform the parliamentary system into a presidential system; however, he opposed the introduction of totalitarianism.[22] The adoption of a new Polish constitution in April 1935 that was tailored by Piłsudski's supporters to his specifications, providing for a strong presidency, came too late for Piłsudski to seek that office; but the April Constitution would serve Poland up to the outbreak of World War II and would carry its Government in Exile until the end of the war and beyond.

Nonetheless, Piłsudski's government depended more on his charismatic authority than on rational-legal authority.[22] None of his followers could claim to be his legitimate heir, and after his death, the Sanation structure would quickly fracture, returning Poland to the pre-Piłsudski era of parliamentary political contention.[22]

Piłsudski's regime began a period of national stabilization and of improvement in the situation of ethnic minorities, which formed about a third of the Second Republic's population.[123][124] Piłsudski replaced the National Democrats' "ethnic-assimilation" with a "state-assimilation" policy: citizens were judged not by their ethnicity but by their loyalty to the state.[125][126] Widely recognized for his opposition to the National Democrats' anti-Semitic policies,[127][128][129][130][131][132] he extended his policy of "state-assimilation" to Polish Jews.[125][126][133][134] The years 1926 to 1935 and Piłsudski himself were favorably viewed by many Polish Jews whose situation improved especially under Piłsudski-appointed Prime Minister Kazimierz Bartel.[135][136] Many Jews saw Piłsudski as their only hope for restraining antisemitic currents in Poland and for maintaining public order; he was seen as a guarantor of stability and a friend of the Jewish people, who voted for him and actively participated in his political bloc.[137] Piłsudski's death in 1935 brought a deterioration in the quality of life of Poland's Jews.[132]

During the 1930s, a combination of developments, from the Great Depression[125] to the vicious spiral of OUN terrorist attacks and government pacifications, caused government relations with the national minorities to deteriorate.[125][138] Unrest among national minorities was also related to foreign policy. Troubles followed repressions in the largely-Ukrainian eastern Galicia, where nearly 1,800 persons were arrested. Tension also arose between the government and Poland's German minority, particularly in Upper Silesia. The government did not yield to calls for antisemitic measures; but the Jews (8.6% of Poland's population) grew discontented for economic reasons that were connected with the Depression. Overall, by the end of Piłsudski's life, his government's relations with national minorities were increasingly problematic.[139]

In the military sphere, Piłsudski, who had shown himself an accomplished military strategist in engineering the "Miracle at the Vistula", has been criticized by some for subsequently concentrating on personnel management and allegedly neglecting modernization of military strategy and equipment.[22][140] His experiences in the Polish-Soviet War (1919–1921) may have led him to overestimate the importance of cavalry and to neglect the development of armoured and air forces.[140] Others, however, contend that, particularly from the late 1920s, he had supported the development of these military branches.[141] The limitations on Poland's military modernization in this period may have been less doctrinal than financial.

Piłsudski's Promethean programme to weaken the Russian Empire and its successor state, the Soviet Union, by supporting nationalist independence movements of major non-Russian peoples dwelling in Russia and the Soviet Union, was co-ordinated from 1927 to the 1939 outbreak of World War II in Europe by the military intelligence officer, Edmund Charaszkiewicz. In the interbellum, but it yielded few tangible results.[145]

Piłsudski sought to maintain his country's independence in the international arena. Assisted by his protégé, Foreign MinisterJózef Beck, he sought support for Poland in alliances with western powers, such as France and the United Kingdom, and with friendly, if less powerful, neighbours, such as Romania and Hungary.[146]

Piłsudski himself was acutely aware of the shakiness of the pacts, and he commented: "Having these pacts, we are straddling two stools. This cannot last long. We have to know from which stool we will tumble first, and when that will be".[149] Critics of the two non-aggression pacts have accused Piłsudski of underestimating Hitler's aggressiveness,[150] of giving Germany time to rearm[151][152] and of allowing Stalin to eliminate opposition, primarily in Ukraine, which had been supported by Piłsudski's Promethean program.[153]

After Adolf Hitlercame to power in Germany in January 1933, Piłsudski is rumored to have proposed to France a preventive war against Germany. It has been argued that Piłsudski may have been sounding out France regarding possible joint military action against Germany.[154] Lack of French interest may have been a reason for Poland signing the Non-Aggression Pact of January 1934.[146][155][156][48] Little evidence has, however, been found in French or Polish diplomatic archives that such a proposal for preventive war was ever actually advanced.[157]

Hitler repeatedly suggested a German-Polish alliance against the Soviet Union, but Piłsudski declined, instead seeking precious time to prepare for potential war with either Germany or the Soviet Union.[48][158] Just before his death, Piłsudski told Józef Beck that it must be Poland's policy to maintain neutral relations with Germany, keep up the Polish alliance with France and improve relations with the United Kingdom.[146]

Religious views

Piłsudski's religious views are a matter of debate. He was baptized on 15 December 1867 in the church of Powiewiórka (then Sventsiany deanery) by the priest, Thomas Valinsky. His godparents were Joseph and Constance Martsinkovsky Ragalskaya.[159]

Pilsudski later returned to the Catholic Church in order to marry Aleksandra Piłsudska. Piłsudski and Aleksandra could not get married as Piłsudski's wife Maria refused to divorce him. It was only after Maria's death in 1921 that they were married, on October 25 of the same year.[162][163]

After the May coup, Piłsudski considered himself a Roman Catholic, but he did not appear to be religious and often used religion as public tool. Piłsudski was quoted saying:

“

Religion is for brainless people.

”

After the coup and Piłsudski's reign as dictator, he often clashed with Catholic leaders but nevertheless, enjoyed good working relationship with Cardinal Aleksander Kakowski, who subsequently led his funeral mass. In 1937, Archbishop of Kraków, Adam Stefan Sapieha, ordered to move Piłsudski's coffin from St. Leonard's Crypt to Royal Tombs at Wawel. This led to open conflict with the church and the government, which threatened to step down.

Death

Grave of Piłsudski's mother in Vilnius, Lithuania. The huge black tombstone is inscribed: "Matka i serce syna"
("A mother and the heart of [her] son") and bears evocative lines from a poem by Słowacki.

By 1935, unbeknownst to the public, Piłsudski had for several years been in declining health. On 12 May 1935, he died of liver cancer at Warsaw's Belweder Palace. The celebration of his life began spontaneously within half an hour of the announcement of his death.[164] It was led by military personnel — former Legionnaires, members of the Polish Military Organization, veterans of the wars of 1919–21 — and by his political collaborators from his service as Chief of State and, later, Prime Minister and Inspector-General.[2]

Condolences were expressed by the clergy, including Poland's PrimateAugust Hlond, as well as by Pope Pius XI, who called himself a "personal friend" of Piłsudski. Notable appreciation for Piłsudski was expressed by Poland's ethnic and religious minorities. Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Judaic and Islamic organizations expressed condolences, praising Piłsudski for his policies of religious tolerance.[2] His death was a shock to members of the Jewish minority, who even years after remembered him as a "very good man" who "protected Jews".[166][167]

Mainstream organizations of ethnic minorities similarly expressed their support for his policies of ethnic tolerance, though he was criticized by, in addition to the Polish communists, the Jewish Labour Bund, and Ukrainian, German and Lithuanian extremists.[2]

Legacy

On 13 May 1935, in accordance with Piłsudski's last wishes, Edward Rydz-Śmigły was named by Poland's president and government to be Inspector-General of the Polish Armed Forces, and on 10 November 1936, he was elevated to Marshal of Poland.[173] Rydz was now one of the most powerful people in Poland, the "second man in the state after the President".[174] While many saw Rydz-Śmigły as a successor to Piłsudski, he never became as influential.[175]

As the Polish government became increasingly authoritarian and conservative, the Rydz-Śmigły faction was opposed by that of the more moderate Ignacy Mościcki, who remained President.[175] After 1938 Rydz-Śmigły reconciled with the President, but the ruling group remained divided into the "President's Men", mostly civilians (the "Castle Group", after the President's official residence, Warsaw's Royal Castle), and the "Marshal's Men" ("Piłsudski's Colonels"), professional military officers and old comrades-in-arms of Piłsudski's. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, some of this political division would survive within the Polish government in exile.

In 1935, at Piłsudski's funeral, President Mościcki eulogized the Marshal: "He was the king of our hearts and the sovereign of our will. During a half-century of his life's travails, he captured heart after heart, soul after soul, until he had drawn the whole of Poland within the purple of his royal spirit ... He gave Poland freedom, boundaries, power and respect."[178]

After World War II, little of Piłsudski's thought influenced the policies of the Polish People's Republic, a de factosatellite of the Soviet Union. In particular, Poland was in no position to resume Piłsudski's effort to build an Intermarium federation of Poland and some of its neighbors; and a "Promethean" endeavor to "break up the Russian state into its main constituents and emancipate the countries that have been forcibly incorporated into that empire."[179]

For a decade after World War II, Piłsudski was either ignored or condemned by Poland's communist government, along with the entire interwar Second Polish Republic. This began to change, however, particularly after de-Stalinization and the Polish October (1956), and historiography in Poland gradually moved away from a purely negative view of Piłsudski toward a more balanced and neutral assessment.[180]

After the fall of communism and the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union, Piłsudski once again came to be publicly acknowledged as a Polish national hero.[181] On the sixtieth anniversary of his death, on 12 May 1995, Poland's Sejm adopted a resolution: "Józef Piłsudski will remain, in our nation's memory, the founder of its independence and the victorious leader who fended off a foreign assault that threatened the whole of Europe and its civilization. Józef Piłsudski served his country well and has entered our history forever."[182]

While some of Piłsudski's political moves remain controversial—particularly the May 1926 Coup d'état, the Brest trials (1931–32), the 1934 establishment of the Bereza Kartuska detention camp, and successive Polish governments' failure to formulate consistent, constructive policies toward the national minorities[183]—Piłsudski continues to be viewed by most Poles as a providential figure in the country's 20th-century history.

He was the subject of paintings by renowned artists such as Jacek Malczewski (1916) and Wojciech Kossak (leaning on his sword, 1928; and astride his horse, Kasztanka, 1928), as well as of numerous caricatures and photos.

Piłsudski has been a character in numerous works of fiction, such as the 1922 novel Generał Barcz (General Barcz) by Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski and the 2007 novel Ice (Lód) by Jacek Dukaj. Poland's National Library lists over 500 publications related to Piłsudski;[188] the U.S. Library of Congress, over 300.[189] Piłsudski's life was the subject of a 2001 Polish television documentary, Marszałek Piłsudski, directed by Andrzej Trzos-Rastawiecki.[190]

Plans are being considered to turn Piłsudski's official residence, the Belweder Palace, which currently houses a small exhibit about him, into a full-fledged museum devoted to his memory.

Descendants

Both daughters of Marshal Piłsudski returned to Poland in 1990, after the fall of the Communist system. Jadwiga Piłsudska's daughter Joanna Jaraczewska returned to Poland in 1979. She married a Polish "Solidarity" activist Janusz Onyszkiewicz in a political prison in 1983. Both were very involved in the Polish struggle against communism between 1979 and 1989.[191]

Notes

a.^ Józef Klemens Piłsudski was commonly referred to without his middle name, as "Józef Piłsudski". A few English sources translate his first name as "Joseph", but this is not the common practice. As a young man, he belonged to underground organizations and used various pseudonyms, including "Wiktor", "Mieczysław" and "Ziuk" (the latter also being his family nickname). Later he was often affectionately called "Dziadek" ("Grandpa" or "the Old Man") and "Marszałek" ("the Marshal"). His ex-soldiers from the Legions also referred to him as "Komendant" ("the Commandant").

b.^ Piłsudski sometimes spoke of being a Lithuanian of Polish culture.[192] For several centuries, declaring both Lithuanian and Polish identity was not self-excluding alike in case of master of Polish poetry Adam Mickiewicz. The question of Piłsudski's ethnicity and culture simply does not match contemporary templates, the more the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth which Piłsudski regarded as his spiritual patria failed to reborn itself and finally ceased to exist in the wake of arising modern nationalisms. Timothy Snyder, who calls him a "Polish-Lithuanian", notes that Piłsudski did not think in terms of 20th-century nationalisms and ethnicities; he considered himself both a Pole and a Lithuanian, and his homeland was the historic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[193]

^Figes 1996, p. 699. "Within weeks of Brusilov's appointment, 14,000 officers had joined the army to fight the Poles, thousands of civilians had volunteered for war-work, and well over 100,000 deserters had returned to the Red Army on the Western Front".

Engelking, Barbara (2001). Paulsson, Gunnar S., ed. Holocaust and Memory: The Experience of the Holocaust and Its Consequences: an Investigation Based on Personal Narratives. Translated by Harris, Emma. Leicester University Press. ISBN978-0-7185-0159-4.

Roos, Hans (1966). A History of Modern Poland, from the Foundation of the State in the First World War to the Present Day. Translated by J.R. Foster from the German Geschichte der polnischen Nation, 1916–1960. (1st American ed.). New York: Knopf. OCLC396836.

Roshwald, Aviel; Stites, Richard (2002). European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment and Propaganda, 1914–1918. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-01324-6.

Piłsudski, Józef (1972). Year 1920 and its Climax: Battle of Warsaw during the Polish-Soviet War, 1919–1920, with the Addition of Soviet Marshal Tukhachevski's March beyond the Vistula. New York: Józef Piłsudski Institute of America. ASINB0006EIT3A.